


Roses are Red, and the Violets are Out of Stock, Sorry

by Schmuzz



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, F/M, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 06:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1929549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schmuzz/pseuds/Schmuzz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If he’s not pissing off his agent, he’s pissing off his costar, or his girlfriend, or somebody else. The only solution seems to be flowers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roses are Red, and the Violets are Out of Stock, Sorry

**Author's Note:**

> I was reading a Neil Gaiman anthology and really enjoyed a story about a guy in LA trying to write a movie adaption of his novel titled ‘The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories’. I thought of this shortly after.
> 
> (For more of my fics, you can find me at teamcrazydicks.tumblr.com)

Flora & Fauna was a flower shop in Los Angeles county that boasted supreme arrangements, perfect for weddings, birthdays, and all other social gatherings, just like every other flower shop in Los Angeles county. Joel went to this one because it was right between his shoot and his apartment, and it was also next to a Starbucks. Which was good, because depending on who he had to make nice with it called for either a cappuccino or a bouquet. Or sometimes both.

“Hi,” he said lamely. Ray was cashier again, like he had been the past month and a half Joel had wandered in, anxious and rubbing his hands together, or tapping a nervous message out on his phone.

“Hey Joel,” Ray said, glancing up at him. “Who’d you piss off today?”

“Sheila,” he muttered. Ray made a derogatory tsking sound and came out from behind the counter.

“I’m thinking roses,” Ray said, putting his hand on Joel’s shoulder and walking him to a set of inlaid doors where they kept their best sets of flowers.

“Yeah, me too.”

See, Joel had a problem – one that wasn’t entirely unique but wasn’t so common or so observed for anyone else other than him.

He kept on making people angry. Accidentally, of course.

It could be anyone – his agent, his co-stars, his girlfriend, his stylist. Anyone who had been around him for more than a week seemed to have some sort of problem with him. In fact, Joel had a working theory that the only reason he still had a sizeable number of friends was because a good portion of them lived in Texas, and the ones that did live in L.A. weren’t sorta-kinda actors, and therefore didn’t hang out all that much.

Sometimes he would make a joke that someone mistook as a personal insult; other times he was doing two shoots at once and couldn’t remember which lines were which; he forgot to fill out the paperwork his agent had sent – or his fax was broken without him knowing it, so he never got any paperwork, and the mere suggestion that Ms. Forsen, aforementioned agent to one Joel Heyman, just e-mail the damn things, it was the 21st century, after all – had her glaring and him sighing and slouching away, already knowing he’d be stopping at a certain flower shop the next morning.

He had probably spent over two grand on flowers by now, he was positive. He was in Flora & Fauna so often that he knew all the employees in the roster. Ray was new. Newish. New hire, whatever. Had been there for about six weeks and even _he_ knew what combination to pull out, depending on who Joel had pissed off.

“How long have you and Sheila been dating, anyway?”

“Eight weeks.” The door opened and the air-conditioned shop got slightly colder. Ray bent down and studied this rose or that, picking out a dozen along with a clump of lavender and baby’s breath. “She wants me to see her parents and I guess. I mean, I don’t know.”

“Yeah, man, I wouldn’t know,” Ray said. His voice was a lot deeper than someone who looked fresh out of college – or fresh into wandering around the real world, taking up odd jobs after figuring that college wasn’t right for them. Way too young for Joel, at any rate. “Any girl I dated was right in my neighborhood. They’d met my parents. Also I was like seventeen so nobody gave a shit.”

Joel wanted to say what he’d been fearing, _I think she wants something serious_. Sheila was pretty serious. Like, terminal disease serious. Like, you only have four months to live better take life by the horns and my biological clock is ticking serious. Like, way too serious for Joel. Instead he said, “Why are they called baby’s breath?” he poked at the little white tufts and Ray pulled the bundle in his arms out of Joel’s reach like they would crumble. The past few months had been a real experiment to how well flowers could hold up in the L.A. heat, in cramped containers, in little to no water. They were a lot more sustaining than people gave them credit for. Except for orchids. Joel hated orchids. Orchids were a bitch to look after.

“Who the hell knows, man.” He took the flowers back to the counter and started to arrange them on white paper.

“Shouldn’t you?” Ray glanced up under his black frames. They worked for his face, though they were dangerously close to emulating the hipster trademark glasses people were wearing forever ago – as in, 2011. Joel was constantly surprising himself by realizing that Ray looked like a scrub by L.A. beauty standards, but privately, he didn’t have any problem staring at him at all.

“I used to work at Game Stop, dude,” he said, breaking off a few flower leaves. “Then I moved here. They just told me what goes with what and how to make sure the hundred dollar bills are authentic. That’s about it.”

“Fair enough.”

“And that’s gonna be thirty-two eighty.” Joel sullenly handed over his credit card, and a moment later he was cradling a gorgeous bouquet of purple, red, and white. Sheila would be coming back from her marketing dinner in twenty minutes, which meant that he’d be getting to her door ten minutes after.

“Thanks,” he said, slowly walking out the door.

“Have a good night, Joel,” Ray said amiably to him. Joel walked to the side of the street where he parked and carefully put the flowers in the passenger seat, getting in and driving off into the darkness.

…

That had been Thursday, and on Saturday Joel had gotten sick and skipped a party that, as Ms. Forsen quickly texted him, had been hosted by a screenwriter with the same publicist as him. Joel was thinking a drink would suffice for his agent – Sheila had given him a Coppola Pinot Noir as a one month anniversary gift, not seeming to care that he didn’t like wine and hadn’t touched it, letting it sit unopened on his kitchen counter – but the writer and the publicist both needed flowers whisked off by couriers, with a handwritten card exclaiming _how_ sorry it was that he had been suffering from food poisoning at the time.

Joel’s handwriting, however, was shit. Ray’s wasn’t. “Yeah, they make sure you can write good. Well. I’m an idiot, so who cares? Who’s the writer guy?” He had a thick ball-point pen in his hand, poised over card stationary that looked too fancy for something that wasn’t a gold-tipped feather quill held by a state regent from two centuries ago. In France. Ray had on a black T-shirt, cargo shorts, and a green, plasticky apron.

“Burnie, with a ‘u’. Burns.”

Ray’s hand hovered over the card. “Isn’t that the guy who looks like Seth Rogen?”

“Yeah, he doesn’t see it.”

“Everyone else can see it. I just saw him do an interview with Zac Efron, actually. He’s cool. Well. He seems cool.”

“Yeah, he’s cool. We know each other,” Joel frowned at the expression, like he was trying to tie his status to Burnie. They _did_ know each other. Moreso back in the day, God, wasn’t that a cliché, too. “He gets angry a lot.”

“Angry like, trashes hotel rooms and kicks over snack tables backstage?”

“Nah, angry like trying to throw a shoe at you if you room with him.”

“You roomed with him?” Joel shrugged dismissively. Ray was teetering on the edge of unaffected and interested, his eyes were opened slightly wider than usual. But still, what was there to say? He went to the same university as Burnie, had been there with him and his friend Matt through their first films and student projects. They were friends, had a lot of the same people because they started out together at the same time in the same places, and had since drifted into different routes; Burnie was always a lot more innovated than Joel, more involved in the internet. It wasn’t like they were strangers now, they just, you know, had other things to do. Same way with Matt, actually, now that Joel thought about it.

“We were in Texas State around the same time, came out here around the same time. You know, we follow each other on Twitter, we’re Facebook friends, and whatever.” Ray nodded.

“And he’s a screenwriter?”

“Yeah he – he does a lot of stuff.”

“How dare he.”

“Mm.” Ray quickly and elegantly wrote out a brief message, attaching it to a small fork stuck out of a bouquet of lilies and bee balm.

“And you’re not secretly a director, are you? Secret agent?”

“Sometimes I play video games,” Joel said dismissively, hands in the pockets of his two hundred dollar jeans. They were three years old now and despite the designer label and original price they had been demoted to laundry day pants. “And read about stocks.”

“Sometimes I play video games,” Ray said back. “And, uh, blaze it. Or not. Maybe.” He hurriedly punched numbers into the cash register. Joel had yet to see a good looking cash register ever; they were all made out of beige plastic and had sunken in keys with thick rubber covers on them in muted colors. “Total is fifty-six seventy. You’re rich, right? To afford all these flowers?” Joel sighed and took out his credit card. It was black and sleek and, on some days, it felt like the best, most put together thing Joel ever owned.

“You know anything I’m in?”

“Uh…”

“Then I’m not rich.” Ray stared at him for a moment; his eyes were large, especially behind his glasses. Joel flicked the card forward in his hand towards him, and the other man went cross-eyed staring at the plastic, just an inch in front of his nose, before reaching out to grab it.

…

“How’s your screenplay going?” Joel said, watching Ray ring up a basket of sunflowers. The problem – one of many problems – that came with giving people flowers all the time was that he was now known as ‘flower guy’ before Joel and, also, if anyone ever had a party that wasn’t big enough to get things like tablecloths and food escorted in by a staff in matching uniforms, then he was the one who had to get centerpieces – i.e., flowers. This was for a wrap-up party for a series he had two scenes for. He couldn’t even remember when he had last gotten a check from the studio, but an e-mail had come in that morning, requesting something ‘summery’ for the celebration that night.

“What?” Ray looked up at him. Joel could be a big boy and admit that the other, _younger_ guy was appealing… somehow. That meant breaking the ice. One thing he knew was that people loved talking about themselves, and even moreso, talking about their ‘creative’ sides.

“Your screenplay. Have you revolutionized the genres and blockbuster movies as we know it yet?” Joel gave him a goading expression, before realizing that was _just_ the sort of thing people tended to get mad about. Everyone in L.A. had a screenplay. People in gas stations, tourists, CEOs… even _he_ had one. Somewhere. Buried deep in a box of files having to deal with his condo rent and actor’s guild registration.

“I… don’t have a screenplay,” Ray said, looking at Joel with an odd expression.

“Are you sure?” He watched Ray stand up, large flower faces tucked in a weaved basket.

“Pretty sure.”

“Positive.”

“I have a sorta successful following on Twitch. When I stream games and stuff.” Joel’s blank expression didn’t lift. “But no screenplay. Why would I write one of those?”

“Because it’s L.A.! That’s what people in L.A. do – they write half a screenplay and tuck it somewhere and show it to anybody wearing Louis Vuitton sunglasses.”

Ray eyed him like he didn’t know if he was joking or not, and took off his glasses cleaning them on his t-shirt. It was black, but had the beginnings of words peeking out from the apron. “Hmm. I got mine from Target.”

Joel let out a long-suffering sigh and, to be properly dramatic, put his head down on the countertop.

“…How’s your screenplay doing?” Ray asked after a minute, ringing Joel up.

“What?”

“If everyone has a screenplay, what’s yours about?”

“Nothing. It’s not about anything,” he grumbled into the finish. “What about a video game, do you have a script for that?”

“Oh dozens,” Ray said, though Joel was uncertain if he was being serious or not. “Come on, what about you? Are you a good writer?”

He remembered helping Burnie on some of his scripts. Back in college. The other man took the wheel on most of those things, but whenever Joel was actually onscreen, Burnie said it was easier for Joel to just add-lib. So, if nothing else, he could write for himself. He didn’t know if that made him talented or not. “Probably not.”

“You could practice.”

“Oh, what’s the point of doing something if you’re not great at it right away?”

“Yeah, that’s what I told my parents when I decided I wasn’t going to college.” Joel handed Ray his credit card, not wanting to know how much he was spending. “Is your future movie about aliens?”

“No.”

“Space marines?”

“No.”

“Is it a mystery? A murder-mystery?”

“I’m leaving, Ray.”

“It’s a comedy then, right? Come on, give me something, here.” Joel smiled to himself as he took the flowers, shuffling out of the shop.      

…    

Sheila had been dating him for three months so Joel got a framed picture of the two of them, vegan chocolate – she was going vegan for the foreseeable future to ‘clean herself out’; something that the thick, green vegetable shakes and gym excursions five days a week weren’t doing, apparently – and flowers.

“Roses?” Ray asked, looking up at Joel as he came into the store.

“Roses.”

Ray had been sitting on the counter and slid off with a huff, heading over to the small air-conditioned compartments on the wall. “What’d you do this time?”

“Nothing. It’s our anniversary.” Ray paused at the door, Joel standing earnestly behind him, half looking at his phone – the flowers to Burnie had worked and his publicist roped him into an online ad his old friend had written for some updated news feature on Google, complete with the ‘hashtag #goodnews’ at the end of the fifteen second clip. He wheedled through the #goodnews results on Twitter, and there were a few shoutouts to him, buried between the advertisements by bot accounts and people complaining how shitty the new feature was and people who legitimately just had good news. He noticed Ray not moving and added, “It’s just three months, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Right.” He knelt down and started plucking out flowers. “So, half the time you come in here saying that you pissed your girlfriend off, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Uh-huh,”

“But you’ve been with her for three months,”

“Right.”

“Do you love her?”

“Kind of personal,”

“I’m from New York, Joel; we do not give a _shit_.” Joel nodded absently, pushing back the temptation to ask where Ray was from. He assumed city, unless he was pretending to be impressive. He went out on a limb and guessed Ray was from one of the boroughs that wasn’t Manhattan – or maybe Harlem. He could fit into Harlem, he thought.

“Love is kind of a more complicated thing than what can be figured out in three months,” Joel said.

“Okay… do you like her?” Joel scrolled through Twitter again. @Mazy_Lives_LovesU wrote _‘the #goodnews feature sucks but at least the new spokesperson is hot. who is he?’_ He sighed and glanced over his phone, to where Ray had turned from his spot on the ground to look up at him.

“No,” he said, not thinking about it. “She’s scary and could probably be happier with some cutthroat scary guy. I’m basically a manchild with a stylist, I don’t know how she hasn’t figured that out yet.”

“Maybe you don’t belong in L.A.,” Ray ventured.

“Maybe you don’t, either.”

Ray stood up. He was shorter than Joel. “Maybe? Probably. Think I have a chance in porn?”

“Absolutely.”

Ray grinned at him and ducked his head right after, walking back to the counter to fix the bouquet together. His fingers were long, worked quickly. Joel imagined he was probably way better at video games than he was. Maybe he was better at a lot of things – except for networking, though it wasn’t like Joel’s inability to read people and his tendency to bumble around through anything was giving him any extra points.

Ray swiped the credit card Joel gave him. “You know one day I keep on expecting this to decline.”

“Do I get a discount if that happens?”

“I mean, we could probably work something out.” He handed the card back, smiling, and Joel had a terrifying mental cut to Ray, naked in soft-edge lighting, kneeling in front of some tan, hairless guy that only existed in certain parts of southern California and porn. There was probably a Sean & Cody or Kings logo just out of reach of Joel’s disturbed brain.

“Thanks,” Joel said, taking the card and the flowers and hauling himself out of the shop. He sat in his car for a minute, trying to think about what he thought about without thinking it.

He met Sheila for dinner two hours later, complained of a migraine, and ended the date early, fully intending to go back to Flora & Fauna for another set of flowers to be delivered to his girlfriend’s office the next day. 

…           

Joel wondered if this was what having a mid-life crisis was like.

It made sense – he was forty-two, making a living off of acting jobs, and even if he looked about ten years younger _now_ at some point he was going to get wrinkles and possibly skin cancer and any part he got because of his looks – most of them – weren’t going to be available anymore. Any rejection he ever gave to the CW was suddenly staring him back in the face. Not to mention he didn’t even have a family to try and point to and deem a ‘personal success’. Sheila was younger and one of many in a long string of girls he tried to date for about two to ten months. Marriage didn’t seem likely, or kids, for that matter, and now he was looking at a twentysomething in a flower shop as a possible contestant for either someone he would invite up to his condo or ‘someone he would invite up to his condo’. He thought about calling Burnie, who had two kids, had already been married, but didn’t have a longer imdb page than Joel, meaning they were probably even.

Instead he just texted Burnie, asking him out for drinks because he was thinking about having a mental breakdown and also they went to school together and he knew that thing about the potassium in Mr. Kelly’s sophomore Chemistry course. Then he got dressed, bought a coffee with too much cream in it, and found Ray on the opening shift for Flora & Fauna.

“Do you ever go home?” Joel asked, catching sight of Ray, as scruffy as he’d always been.

“No I have a sleeping bag in the back,” He jutted his thumb out to the hidden part of the store. “Need something?”

“No I was just driving by and thought, ‘Poor Ray, having to deal with my shit all the time, I should get him a coffee,’” He held up the cup that was hot enough to almost burn his hand through the protective cardboard cozy. Ray raised his eyebrows.

“Really?” he said, sounding surprised. “Are you dicking me?”

“I’m not dicking anybody,” Joel said, and was about to say, _‘But seriously no this is my shitty coffee and I’m not sharing it.’_ But Ray’s face was in some weird transitioning stage where he wanted so badly to look pleasantly surprised but wasn’t sure if Joel was about to pull the rug right out from under his feet. And it wasn’t like Joel was going to drink more than a few sips anyway before tossing it. “But yeah, this is for you,” he said, definitely surprising Ray and certainly surprising himself. “It’s, uh, there’s no sugar in it.” Ray opened the top, dunked his finger in and stuck the digit in his mouth.

“Eh, it’s fine. Thanks so much, Joel – I ran out of Red Bulls like, two days ago and I’m kinda slacking so. This was nice. Very much appreciated.”

“You’re welcome,” Joel said haltingly. “Am I your favorite customer yet or?”

“You’ve been my favorite customer since I started working here. Mostly because you show up like, fifty times a month – and you always need roses. Roses are awesome.” He stuck the lid back on the drink and took an actual sip, wiping his other hand on his jeans – actual jeans today, not that they looked any better than cargo shorts. Joel used to wear cargo shorts all the time back home, and he had a few pairs that he wouldn’t throw out ever, even under threat of death, but they never seemed to actually get off their hangers, acting as nostalgic pieces on display.

He was suddenly missing Ray’s cargo shorts when the other man asked, “So who do you need to grovel for forgiveness today?”

It took him a while to come up with Sheila, who seemed to have a good enough time with him last night, even if their conversation was stalled by two quick phone calls on her end, and a barrage of texts and Twitter messages on his own – the #goodnews thing had blown up since a few curious people managed to track down the name of the ‘mysterious actor guy’ and his history in production. He got eighty followers that night and another three hundred when he woke up this morning. He wished he was in more comedy stuff – the internet liked comedy stuff and that seemed like the only place where he wasn’t doing that bad for himself.

On the internet he was living somewhere where being ‘unknown’ meant that someone with fifteen minutes on their hands would bother trying to track down his name and face; where followers meant something; where he wasn’t constantly having to patch over minor transgressions with coffee and flowers and… whatever.

“You know what?” Joel said, watching Ray idly take in his coffee. “I just wanted to stop by to give you that.”

“Really?” Ray said again, looking surprised once more.

Joel smiled tightly at him. “Really,” he said, “And now you have your coffee and I’m off.”

“Oh! Uh, have a good day, Joel,” Ray said, slowly waving to him as Joel more or less stomped out of the store. He waved back, headed to his car before thinking that he _really_ needed a coffee, and made a detour to the Starbucks next door. They didn’t screw up his order this time, and he drank it self-righteously all the way to work, about thirty minutes away.

…

He and Burnie met for dinner at a nice Italian bistro the other man liked to go to. “It’s great,” he said as Joel left the studio that evening, listening to his Bluetooth as he drove down the interstate. “It’s like twenty-five minutes away. Maybe thirty.” It was thirty, and when he got there Burnie was already waiting, a beer in his hand. He was thumbing through something on his iPhone screen, and when Joel sat down Burnie smiled and said, “Can you believe how many people liked that commercial you did?” He showed Joel his phone; yet another barrage of tweets praising the commercial and its funny, cute star.

“You always were a better writer than anyone else I knew,” Joel said. He meant it, too. Burnie was pretty good at a lot of things. “How’s that screenplay going?”

Burnie laughed. “Can you believe we got over two million dollars from kickstarter? It’s going to be indie production-wise, but we’re thinking we can get at least a four hundred theater release,”

“Still spelling laser wrong?”

“Hey, hey, laser with a ‘z’ is very important to the story. Actually, I wanted to mention this – sorry about bringing business up, I know you wanted to cry on my shoulder and everything – but we’re also gearing up for the Day Five project.”

“Ah yes, the insomniac zombies. That’s funded too?” Burnie nodded, a determined light in his eyes. Just then a waitress came by. Joel asked for a beer, Burnie got a refill, and they both went for hard to pronounce pasta dishes that probably weren’t served in Italy ever.

“I was thinking you could be in it. I mean, if you don’t have anything going on.”

Joel was, for the first time in months, pleasantly surprised. Most of his surprises involved unfortunate scheduling mishaps he didn’t catch until the last minute, or realizing they weren’t shooting the scene he thought they were, or that construction was going on I-95, not I-97, meaning that everything was suddenly a lot longer than half an hour away from him. But this time he smiled, unsure of himself. He wished he hung out with Burnie more. “I would love to. I’ll make it happen.”

“I figured you would be able to mimic someone who hasn’t slept in five days really well.”

“Probably.” They talked back and forth a bit. About their lives – Burnie had a lot more to talk about, of course – and rehashing amusing anecdotes. Joel was in tears when Burnie was talking about some embarrassing mishap with his new girlfriend and his two kids, and Joel recounted all the failures that required him to go get everyone he ever knew a bouquet of flowers each week.

“Really? You didn’t have to send me flowers, man. You were sick. We’re friends, friends don’t give a shit.”

Joel sighed, draining his beer. “I guess that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You know that I’m a raging disappointment to everyone in my life?”

“Yes, I’ve been aware of that since college, Joel.”

“Like, I just realized how _sad_ it is. The florist I go to knows me by name. I think he’s the only guy I’ve never disappointed before.”

“Yeah, imagine getting him flowers.”

“I gave him my coffee today. I mean I wasn’t going to drink it because they screwed it up but – I think I’m in love with this guy, to be honest, because he’s twenty and he doesn’t give a shit and in some way that means that if I screw something up he won’t need me to grovel before getting on with his life. Maybe it’s because he’s from New York.”

“Manhattan?”

“Nah, probably a shitty part. But definitely the boroughs.”

“Well they don’t give a shit about anything. A gay guy from Brooklyn could work.”

“No he’s not even like that. He’s probably from Queens. Or the Bronx. Like,” Joel ran a hand through his hair. “I’m a mess and I’m not even addicted to cocaine. This sucks.” Their waitress interrupted them, setting their plates down on the table before walking away.

Burnie twirled some angel hair noodles around his fork, peering up at Joel from behind his glasses. “Wow. Yeah, that’s a little rough. Is he hot?”

“He shouldn’t be. He’s like half my age, he wears cargo shorts and looks like a dirty hipster.”

“Oh, hipsters aren’t even in anymore,” Burnie admonished. Joel poked at a chunk of tomato that was sitting in his dish.

“He doesn’t give a shit about anything, he plays video games, he’s just – I don’t know. Whenever I date a girl they’re all younger than me and angrier and I thought that was my type but he’s definitely not that and I’m really more into it than I should be.”

“Well, how into it are we talking? Like, have you even asked him out yet or are you just sadly jacking off to his Facebook profile?”

“Neither,” he sighed and smacked one of the oyster shells on his dish with a fork. Did he like oysters? He couldn’t remember. “All I know is that I came here to ask about career and girlfriend advice and I ended up yelling about some random florist.”

Burnie reached for his beer. “Which girlfriend was this? Katilin? Or no, that was last year. Sandra?”

“Sheila,” Joel corrected, slumping further into his seat.

“And how’s she doing?”

“She’s too good for me and my chronic ability to fuck up basic situations. She deserves someone with a similar diehard attitude.”

“Okay. And why haven’t you broken up with her?” Joel shrugged and jammed some pasta into his mouth. All of his girlfriends broke up with him, or they made it mutual. It wasn’t that he was a spineless wimp or anything, he just thought that he’d let them realize they were wasting their time and maybe break up with him when it was convenient. He wouldn’t want to give Sheila unneeded stress before her next marketing pitch or whatever. That was it. It made perfect sense to him, in his own head where no one else could offer an alternative opinion.

“Because I’m a spineless wimp who doesn’t know what he wants so I just cling to whoever seems to know what they want so that I can be lead around for a few months. And then I realize that I’ve never been able to be lead around anyway – even if it’s for my own good – so we end up breaking up.” He glanced at Burnie, who was sitting in an Oxford shirt and a red and white checkered tie. His stubble was messy in a purposeful, styled and maintained way. “And I probably date women like that because I already know, deep down, that they’re not compatible with me so that way I don’t fall in love and don’t get attached so it’s more of a relief when I force them out of my lives. Or force them to force _me_ out of their lives. Whichever.” He leaned forward, pointing his fork at Burnie. “You know, you could be a psychologist, you are really good at making people tell you things.”

Burnie laughed, his teeth as intense as searchlights. “You did that all by yourself, Joel. You want an expert opinion? Hang out with your friends more. And that florist kid, if he makes you realize stuff like this.”

Joel’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked – it was Sheila. “Shit,” he said.

“What?”

“My girlfriend’s wondering where I am.”

“Oh no, better let her know we’re not having an affair or anything.”

“It’s Thursday. We do dates on Thursdays. I forgot to tell her I was having dinner with you. I, oh my God, I just stood her up. We’ve been dating for almost three months and I fucking stood her up!”

“You’re going to need a shit ton of flowers to make up for that.” Joel nodded, then looked around for a waiter. The sun was an orange haze in the west and it was hard to see anything.

“I need to get out of here.”

“Yeah, sure. Go ahead. I can pay this time.”

“Seriously?” Burnie opened his wallet. He pulled out a black credit card that looked like it was made out of something much more expensive than plastic.

“Yeah. Friends, remember? And think of this dinner as me convincing you to come on as a new hire. That way I can put it on the business card.” Joel smiled, resolving that he really _did_ need to hang out with Burnie more. They were friends in college for a reason, and somehow the twenty-plus years in L.A. hadn’t changed that, either. “Just do what you have to do, man. Remember what you said,” Burnie added pointedly. Joel nodded, stood up and stumbled out to the parking lot.

He ran through what he was going to say to Sheila the entirety of the car ride. Half an hour later, he was pulling up to his condo, next to his girlfriend’s car. Joel knew he was clueless and unarmed in every sense, but anxiety and determination had melded together deep inside him, and for what felt like once in his life, he knew what he had to do.

…

In the end Sheila had, with some gentle coercions from Joel, realized that she needed to be with someone that was similar to her personality in order to make her the best blend of happy and efficient, and that person was not Joel. Sheila didn’t seem sad about it, though she never seemed anything less than perfectly put together at all times; Joel knew she would be fine.

He miraculously didn’t screw up any of his lines or forget to send in paperwork – mostly that was because he had no shoots to show up at until next month now, but still. On Saturday Burnie sent him the almost final draft of Day Five, with a note that he was allowed to ‘alter’ his dialogue a bit. ‘ _I know you, Joel,_ ’ Burnie had written on the cover. He read through the stack of paper five times over the following two days, a pencil between his teeth as he added new notes and omitted other ones from an earlier reading. It was a good script, and stuck in his apartment for the weekend, reading over lines and saying them out loud while pacing his minimal floor space reminded him of a time over twenty years ago, where he was doing the same thing in a dorm room, convinced that this was the only thing he could do with himself.

All in all, it was a peaceful break where he didn’t answer to anyone and didn’t go out. He even put on some of his old cargo shorts, since it wasn’t like he had anyone to impress – or not offend. Feeling nostalgic, he even took out the screenplay he had written once, ages ago. He flipped through it a few times before getting embarrassed and putting it fondly back in the box it belonged.

After a week and a half, he was ready to see Ray.

He had a plan for this – or an outline of one. It would be an appropriately cute idea, he had thought, to get Ray flowers. He hesitated at roses, at what that implied right off the bat, but Ray himself liked them, he had said such a thing on multiple occasions. So, roses for Ray; it had a ring to it, so it must be a perfect idea. He drove out to another floral shop to get a dozen in rich, overly romantic red. The paper they were folded in was tied with a white ribbon, and for once Joel took care placing them in the passenger seat of his car.

It was noon and Ray was at the register like always, checking another customer out. Joel lingered by the door until the woman had left with a few potted orchids. Joel was tempted to warn her about how much orchids sucked, but just went inside, keeping the flowers behind his back, even if the paper they were wrapped in crinkled as he moved. Ray, not noticing the noise yet, had his head resting on a fist, staring at the array of flowers kept behind glass doors.

“Excuse me,” Joel said. Ray looked up, face tuning into Joel’s. “Hey,” Joel had forgotten how weirdly attracted he was to the younger man until just now; Ray’s eyes were dark and had a wideness that only came from being young. Ray scratched the side of his jaw, running his fingers over the edge of his face to the top of his neck. He was smiling, cheeks tight.

“Hey yourself. You haven’t been by in a while so I thought you had died or suddenly decided to not suck or something.”

“Nah, just on break, really. No one around to disappoint.” Ray smirked.

“Except for your girlfriend, right?”

“Can’t disappoint an ex, can you? Well, I guess technically you can but,” He shrugged. “Sheila and I broke up last week. It was a mutual thing.”

Ray scrutinized him for a moment “Oh,” he said carefully. “So you both just figured that it was, uh, for the best?”

Joel smiled. “It wasn’t really Sheila. I mean, I’ve dated a lot of people that I thought would make me a better person or something, but,” He shook his head and eyed the counter space. Ray was fiddling with his hands, long fingers stretched against his palms and across his knuckles. “Other people can’t change you – you have to get up off your ass and do it yourself. And if you don’t want to, if that really isn’t for you and you’re okay with that, then at least have the brains to be with someone who is similar enough to you that you’re, you know –”

“Compatible?” Ray said. “Happy together?”

“Yeah,” Joel said. When he looked up, he saw that Ray was biting his lip.

“So, did you have to get something –”

“Here,” Joel interrupted, taking the flowers from behind him and presenting them to Ray. “They’re. I got them for you.” Ray looked at him for a moment, then to the flowers, then back to Joel. “Sorry that – I interrupted you. I got excited.”

“You are kind of… jumpy, personality wise,” Ray muttered, taking the bouquet. “Are the roses symbolic of our never-ending love or,” He ran a finger along one of the blossoms and Joel wanted to kiss him.

“You like roses,” Joel said simply. “Unless you were joking. I mean, you’re sarcastic all the time, but I distinctly remember roses.”

“I do like roses, yeah.”

“But also the love thing could work,” Joel said quickly. “I mean, maybe not love that’s kind of early. Maybe a very strong like.”

“Like-like? Are you admitting that you like-like me now, Joel?”

Joel squared his shoulders to try and look impressive. It probably wasn’t doing much, though. “I think I’ve liked-liked you for a while, actually, and now I’m officially single and officially telling you, and if you’re okay with that then I would also like to officially ask you on a date.”

Ray smiled again; loose and carefree. He leaned forward across the counter. “Really?”

“Really,”

“Oh. Well then. What time is it?” Joel checked his phone.

“Almost one.”

“You wanna go out right now? I got promoted to manager like, two months ago so I can kind of make up my own schedule now.”

“Yeah?”

“I can be a free man for like, ninety minutes with you.”

“You’re amazing, Ray. I hope you know that.”

Ray shrugged, walking around the counter. The flowers balanced in his arm. “I’ve been made aware. He walked over and opened the door to one of the refrigerators lining the wall. He bent down, stuffing them besides the other roses.

“What are you doing?”

“Well, they’ll wilt in your car. Where’d you go to get these anyway?”

“Lavender Fields,” Joel answered. “Other side of the interstate.”

“So,” Ray looked over his shoulder at Joel. “You gave some other flower shop business instead of mine? Do you know how much commission I get with you coming here every couple of days?”

Joel winced. “Um?”

“Kidding. Stuck on salary. I guess it would’ve been shitty to have me do all the work for my own flowers. These are really nice, by the way.”

“But you’re not going to keep them?”

“Joel, I am up to my ass in flowers fifty hours a week. And trust me, they look way better here than in my shitty apartment.” He looked thoughtfully at them for a moment, and carefully worked one out of the arrangement. “See? I just need one of them, anyway.” He stood up and shut the door, long stem in his hand. “So, what do you want to do for lunch? I’m feeling up for something around three and a half stars.” He broke off most of the stem and the thorns. Joel was about to ask what he was doing until he took the rose and stuck it behind his ear. “How’s that?”

“Absolutely gorgeous,” Joel said. “And the rose looks nice, too,” Ray snorted, covering his face for a second, too late to stop Joel from seeing the blush on his face.

“So lame,” Ray said. The two of them walked to the exit, Ray pausing to lock up.

“I’m thinking Mexican. I know a great place about thirty minutes away.” The younger man raised his eyebrows before smiling again, slipping the keys back in his pocket.

“Oh, sweet. Let’s do it.” Joel started to walk forward to where his car was, but hesitated, feeling Ray’s hand slip into his own. Joel curled their fingers together and felt his mouth move into a grin before he could even think to stop himself.

“Hey,” Ray muttered into his ear.

“Hm?”

“Nice shorts, by the way,” Joel glanced down and realized they were both wearing almost identical pairs of tan cargo shorts.

“Oh my God,” Joel said, starting to laugh. He heard Ray’s low chuckle in his ear, his fingers squeeze around his, and laughed even harder.


End file.
